“Hey Fatty, how ’bout some jogging?”
My awesome sister came home from work today to find me sitting on the couch, barely mobile with a laptop on my legs. She then said probably the last thing I expected her to say to me: “Do you want to go jogging?”
“What?” I said, stupidly.
“It’s not raining,” she pointed out, already moving on to her supporting arguments.
“Are you serious?” I asked. I’d like to point out that I’m not usually given to pointless, rhetorical statements. I just hadn’t been jogging in more than a year, since my friend Jerod was trying to get into the FBI.
“Come on,” she said, indicating that the argument was over, and I had lost. Dammit.
Several minutes later I was geared up in sweats and sneakers, still not quite believing that I was going jogging. The phone started ringing as we prepared to walk out the door. It was Ashley, calling from the office. I explained to her what was about to happen.
“What? You’re going jogging?”
“Trust me, I can barely believe it myself.”
“Are you going to be long?”
“No, I’ll probably only be able to go ten minutes before I collapse like the weakling that I am. ”
We headed out the door then, swaddled up for the weather in sweatshirts and beanies. Lua had the foresight to wear gloves, whereas I toted along an iron cannonball as my auxilliary workout equipment. Two blocks later we found ourselves at Portland State’s outdoor athletic field, a fake-grass covered multi-use area adjacent to the Stott Center.
I’m not really a runner. Did I mention that? Needless to say, I got owned. I managed to get in one mile, five laps of field. I walked laps three and five. Lua soldiered on for another mile after I gave up. I made up for stopping by slinging my trusty kettlebell around for a while. It turns out that cast iron gets really, really cold when it’s left outdoors at night in cold weather. Even for just an hour. And the temperature was 39 degrees fondly Fahrenheit.
